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Drug War Opponent to Speak at Burroughs Center

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For Immediate Release: January 11th, 2006

"The Drug War Is Meant to Be Waged Not Won" is the title of a talk to be given by Clifford Thornton at the Burroughs Community Center at 2470 Fairfield Ave, BRIDGEPORT, CT on Thursday, January 12, at 7:00 PM. Thornton is founder of the Hartford-based organization Efficacy, which seeks peaceful alternatives to the War on Drugs. He will talk about the effects of our failed drug policies on crime, the economy, and the lives of our youth.

Clifford W. Thornton, Jr., is a retired African-American businessman, whose mother died of a heroin overdose when Mr. Thornton was 18. As a result of this loss, he wanted drug laws to be harsher. Now he believes that if heroin use had been legal, and supervised by doctors, his mother might have lived a relatively safe and healthy life.

In his provocative presentations, Mr. Thornton explains how the Drug War harms all Americans, especially people of color: Although the majority of users are white, most of the people who are in prison for drug offenses are minorities, and most of these are young African-American men.

Mr. Thornton argues that the Drug War is "worse for blacks than slavery."

"I watched, decade after decade, my native Hartford go downhill, and I began to delve into the drug problem to see what was wrong. More and more people were using drugs and more and more people were going to jail, with no apparent stop to the flow of drugs into the city."

Thornton believes that the solution to the drug epidemic must involve Legalization, medicalization and decriminalization of all illegal drugs plus a focus on the medical problem of abuse and addiction. "Treatment reduces drug abuse better than imprisonment, and covers six recovering patients for the annual cost of one recidivist prisoner," he claims. Since 1998, Thornton has spoken to over 300,000 people in civic organizations, community forums, debates and college presentations, always receiving rave reviews.

Thursday's event is sponsored by the CT Green Party, which has discussed with Thornton a possible run for Governor in 2006.